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Soccer. ..F*** No. Why not many in N.A. give much of a sh**
a) it’s painfully slow but more importantly. .
b) referees’ horrible calls all too frequently decide the game.Case a) above in today’s game. I fell asleep in the 1st half.
Case b) above in today’s game. The ref gave the winning penalty kick goal on a clear dive. This offends our North American inflated sense of justice. It’s not for nothing that we happily accept 5 minute waits while refs review and often overturn wrong calls.
And before some soccer wonk mentions the 3rd Brazilian goal it never would have happened without Croatia pressing for an equalizer to the unjust penalty kick.
Oh yeh I forgot. Equally annying:
c) the announcers and commentators glossed over the referee’s poor call and celebrated the penalty kick as if it was some miraculous achievement. It shouts of a corrupt insincerity that easily equals FIFA’s greedy old men.
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61 Replies
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Yeah…NFL referees never make bad calls that allow teams to win when they shouldn’t have. Never happens in American professional sports.
Although lately basketball players are trying all that “dive” crap in order to get penalties…and they are as obvious as the soccer ones. But the NBA refs are having none of it.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
NFL players take dives all the time but it’s easier to hide since there’s so much contact in the game.
Here’s one of the most obvious examples. The Rams were easily moving the ball in their hurry up offense so two Giants players fall down at the same time to force a stoppage of play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV3K_ML2UsIvoius example
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[Shane Ross] “Yeah…NFL referees never make bad calls that allow teams to win when they shouldn’t have. Never happens in American professional sports.”
Of course it happens, but much, much more rarely than in soccer where it seems every third major game I watch is decided in some way or other by a bad call. In North American sports when a major event is decided by a bad call it’s practically treated as a criminal act with league investigations and rule changes. In soccer the only people who get upset are the losing teams and their supporters. The vast neutral majority accept bad calls as a necessary part of the game. They’re right. It is necessary as long as FIFA changes at the pace of a crippled snail. The NHL, which has a much smaller playing surface went to two refs a few years ago. The result is much fewer blown calls. They’ve also gone to coaches challenges and ref instigated play reviews with critical calls.
That fans accept the sorry state of things in Soccer is one major difference with fans of North American pro sports. I’m convinced it’s also one of the major reasons holding back the acceptance of the game here.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
[Andrew Kimery] ” The Rams were easily moving the ball in their hurry up offense so two Giants players fall down at the same time to force a stoppage of play.”
You can put money on the fact that the referees of that game were reviewed afterwards by the supervisor of refereeing and warned about it not being allowed to happen again.
The points is that refs will always blow calls. When it affects the final result of a game it’s whether it’s acceptable to the league and the fans. In soccer it seems, no one really cares except the losing team and they’ve just got to suck it up.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
For me it’s simpler, as I’ve had many discussions with people at the pub over this very topic.
1) Americans don’t understand ties… there’s a winner in every contest we support.
2) The local pub is over-run with people who are not regulars and who do not live in our neighborhood. The owner is figuring out that they tie up every table drinking water and the occasional cheap beer… preventing the rest of us from getting in…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[David Cherniack] “You can put money on the fact that the referees of that game were reviewed afterwards by the supervisor of refereeing and warned about it not being allowed to happen again. “
Probably not. It was kinda the joking talk of sports news the rest of the week and while faking an injury is a penalty (it falls under unsportsmanlike conduct) the refs are told to always err on the side of caution when it comes to player safety. What’s most likely to happen is that if obvious diving like this continues then players will be fined after the league reviews game film. With that being said, coaches and players seemed to make it apparent that diving is routine in NFL games and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change. The NFL has bigger problems to solve so I think they’ll keep turing a blind eye dives.
[David Cherniack] “The points is that refs will always blow calls. When it affects the final result of a game it’s whether it’s acceptable to the league and the fans. In soccer it seems, no one really cares except the losing team and they’ve just got to suck it up.”
I think lots of fans care but it’s whether or not FIFA does anything about it. For example, massive fan outcry over a couple of blown goal calls in the 2010 World Cup is the reason that goal line cameras have finally been adopted by FIFA. I do agree that soccer would be helped by a replay system. In the time it takes to setup a free kick or penalty kick a replay official should easily see if a foul was/wasn’t committed.
I think the stumbling block is strong traditionalists currently running FIFA and referees, in general, not wanting to be second guessed. It’s pretty much the same reason baseball was the last major US sport to start using instant replay.
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Your problems with “soccer”:
1. It’s slow
2. Referees make mistakes because decisions are not reviewed – “It’s not for nothing that we happily accept 5 minute waits while refs review and often overturn wrong calls.”Got it.
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[andy lewis] “Your problems with “soccer”:
1. It’s slow
2. Referees make mistakes because decisions are not reviewed – “It’s not for nothing that we happily accept 5 minute waits while refs review and often overturn wrong calls.”Got it”
Got it? Don’t think so.
“Slow” as in soccer is slow action with relatively few scoring chances compared to other sports.
That most fans are happy to trade 5 minutes to get it right and let truth, justice, and the American Way prevail rather than a mistake does not feel slow. Tension builds, after all.
North American football has the no action period between plays. The action speed during the play is blindingly fast, with every play designed to have the possibility of a score.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
Episode 170 of the Freakonomics podcast addresses this issue. Posted today:
My personal feeling is that soccer, and the rules that govern it, don’t fit neatly in to tidy compartments all of the time, and Americans are too impatient to let go of the notion that sometimes shit happens without a valid explanation. Plus, there’s not enough violence, the clock is always running, and stoppage time does not fit in to the American psyche. 🙂 In short, it’s too inexact for most Americans.
In the podcast, a British journalist that’s now a professor at Tufts refers to soccer players as artists, but American soccer players as athletic and “workmen-like”. The host says that only in soccer, would being called athletic become an insult. They also go in to some key cultural differences, which are pretty interesting.
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Interesting take by a soccer writer on the decisive blown call in today’s opener.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com
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